420 CHAPTER LVI. THE RIDOLFI CONSPIRACY. FHOM the great day when Wblsey ceased to be a minister, when Cardinal Campeggio left England carrying with him the curses of the people and the stolen love-letters from Henry VIII. to Anne Boleyn, the Par- liament met year after year for a quarter of a century, almost without intermission. In the early steps of the revolution, whether it was in the reconstruction of the law, the establishment of the succession, the attainder of a minister, or the decapitation of a queen, the repre- sentatives of the people were seen, for good or evil, taking their share in the actions of the Crown. Whether it was, according to the modern theory, that the Parliaments of Henry VIII. were but the mechani- cal instruments of a despot's caprice, or that the great body of the nation sincerely approved of the King's policy, such was the evident fact ; and the result of it
